Two long but blessed days

We had marathon Skype meetings yesterday and today. Praise the Lord that Christie was able to join us for many hours!

We covered our plans for 2012. A few key conclusions:

We're not going in November. We think we can get the pilot teacher/principal training kicked off via distance, and then Anthony and Joe can come up in April to wrap it up and start the next round in Nigeria, then go to Cameroon to do the same thing there.

It would be good for us in curriculum to join them to work with the writers, but it would probably be more effective if I could spend six months in Nigeria meeting personally with the writers every week. My dream would be to spend a few months in Nigeria and then the next curriculum "events" in other African countries.

Christie even told me this morning, "JennyBeth, I need you here. I will fast and pray for that." Please join her in praying for my support so that I can be available to go anywhere I need to.

Now, to unwind from all that sitting at the computer with some set dancing! :)

Planning with passion

Anthony wrote this in a planning document we reviewed today:

I’ve had chances to do things that made big bucks and I’ve passed them by. This is the first time where I’ve seen a chance to give millions of kids an education better than the one I got, one that points them to the King. I DO NOT WANT TO MISS THIS CHANCE! I DO NOT WANT TO GET 5 YEARS DOWN THE ROAD AND SEE SATAN STOLE THE CHANCE. WE MUST MOVE NOW. WE MUST TAKE THIS STRONG HOLD! OR WE MUST DIE TRYING!

This is the urgency in all our hearts. The growth of the churches in Africa, the priority they have placed on rebuilding their education infrastructure, the incoming tsunami of technology--all these things indicate to TEN3 that now is possibly the best opportunity there has ever been to make Christ known to a whole generation in dozens of countries. What never ceases to amaze me is that this is a vision as fantastic as a young person could imagine, and yet I get to work toward it with colleagues who have the maturity to pursue it realistically, and faith in the God who alone can make it happen.

Puppies and Gnomes and eternal Truth for Africa

Mom looked over my shoulder at my screen the other day and read aloud,

~~~When Ubuntu leaves Gnome these may change. However, Puppy may use these. We need to double check that when we have Internet access.

Her tone was something like, "Are these real words?" And yeah, it's pretty unconventional terminology.

That note is about what I'm working on now, which is switching the software our Computer Training Outreach (CTO) is based on. Windows is expensive, and of course we're not going to teach our schools to pirate it, so we based the CTO on Ubuntu, which is a quality free operating system that comes from South Africa. Since joining TEN3, I've come to use Ubuntu for about 70% of my computer work, even personal work.

However, in consulting our partner schools in Nigeria in August, we discovered to get enough computers, they are having to buy them old--so even though Ubuntu is "lighter" than Windows, they still can't run it well. So we've seen a need to switch to Puppy Linux, which is specifically designed to run on older machines.

Cute, isn't he? Our model is for the schools to have many older computers with Puppy Linux, from which they will teach things like typing, file browsing, and introductions to word processing, spreadsheets and drawing.
The schools will also have a few newer computers with Ubuntu and Windows on them. The students will first learn to apply what they learned in Puppy to these systems.
This is extremely strong pedagogy, because it doesn't just teach students what buttons to press to get an effect--that kind of thing changes all the time in computers. Instead, students learn how to learn, how to be comfortable with any new system or program they have to use.

This is a lot of work for Anthony and me, but if you could decipher anything from that red paragraph, it indicates that we would have had to overhaul things for Ubuntu anyway. Computers are always changing! That's a strong theme in our material, that computers, and many things in the world, are always changing, but the truth is always the same. God's Word is the only definitive source of knowledge, the only thing you can securely build your life upon.

I'm pretty well convinced God has blessed me with the most amazing team ever to work with. I was laughing last year, at the fact that I was traveling with all middle-aged men, that I didn't know whether that made me the spring chicken or the odd duck. "We're all odd ducks," George responded. Which I guess is why I'm so comfortable with this bunch and so happy to work with them. The years that they have had walking with the Lord, years of experience in the thick of difficulties as missionaries, has given them priceless wisdom, knowledge and character.

Mark, Claude, Joe, me, Anthony, Ken, Ray, Jim

I spent a lot of my free time just listening to them, as they would talk about the Bible, their experiences as missionaries, or church history and how that relates to social and intellectual movements. Joe is one of the few people who will positively wear me out intellectually! I love listening to Ray sharing what inspires him, Ken's explanations of how things work, and George's and Joe's amazing bush stories.
I'm really humbled how they respect me as a colleague and look after me like a daughter.
If there is conflict, it is constructive. If there is a problem, they deal with it. I don't think pettiness exists in their universe.
They do not hesitate to apologize.

Probably my favorite thing relates back to my memories of youth group mission trips. It bothered me that of all the time we might spend in a vehicle or otherwise "off duty," we'd talk about the silliest things, sing annoying songs, even gossip, but seldom would worshipful conversation or singing happen spontaneously. With this team, sure, there are jokes and goofing off, but it was common to hear them whistling "Greater than All Our Sin" or humming "Redeemed" while doing dishes, and it was guaranteed that there would be meaningful spontaneous conversation about God and what it means to serve Him throughout the day.

This made it soooo much better through those three weeks as we dealt with the stress of having to re-do our plans time and time again as circumstances surprised us, making decisions about expenses to pay, how to work with people who came in and had missed four days of instruction, etc. I was encouraged each day to be told how God has been faithful in the lives of each of my team, as I saw how He is active in all our hearts today.

And yes, we did have fun fellowship as well...

Claude and Mark playing ping-pong

One of my favorite moments was playing pool with George, and it was so dark we had to lean in 6" from a ball before we could tell whether it was a stripe or solid! I won, but only because he mistook the 8-ball for one of his!

Thanking God for a blessed time; looking forward to the future

"Rainy season had arrived again and Yaaya was happy. Even though it meant long hours working in the fields, he enjoyed the cooler weather and watching green plants spring up everywhere. It seemed like even the animals were happier now that the rains had come. Of course, it was early in the season yet, and Yaaya was already aware that many people seemed to get sick during the rains. In fact, he had been quite sick himself last summer, with awful aches and chills for the better part of a week."

--doesn't sound quite like your typical college textbook, does it? We are trying the approach of building our Biblical Health and Life Management curriculum from a continuing story. This will hopefully accomplish two things – give our writers inspiration for writing their material creatively and with focus, and help our students see that these lessons relate directly to their own everyday lives. We are NOT making those courses that students sit through thinking "Why do I have to take this? I'll never use it." Instead, we want our students to read these stories and think, "Yeah, me too--" and from there they will want to pay careful attention to the lessons that apply to these stories.

So we spent a lot of time collecting stories from the writers -- stories about the issues that are common among African young people, stories about the difficulties they face in education, family life, career pursuits, and more.

As we gathered these stories, we considered what Scripture has to say about the issues and how we will teach it in the material, which is best summarized in this beautiful quote:

I believe that no teacher should strive to make men think as he thinks, but to lead them to the living Truth, to the Master Himself, of whom alone they can learn anything, who will make them in themselves know what is true by the very seeing of it. I believe that the inspiration of the Almighty alone gives understanding. I believe that to be the disciple of Christ is the end of being; that to persuade men to be His disciples is the end of teaching.

George MacDonald, Creation in Christ

There are so many other things to share ... how good it was to be face-to-face with my colleagues, the new friends I made, how crazy our situation was when the conference first started, how wonderful the rain was, how I learned a couple things about cooking in Nigeria ... Ah, well. Blog material for later ;)

A new definition of thanks

I'd like to start off my reporting with a poem I've been working on:
(with thanks to Jordy Williams, whose poem inspired a device in this one, and Christie Dasaro and Ruth Sallah, for helping me understand the language)

From west Africa I learned a phrase,
"Mungode Yesu"; it's Hausa,
so it means far more than
"Thank You Jesus" in my
pampered, perfect American.
For Hausa is the language
of bartering over patterned cloth
and smoked fish, the language hummed
by AIDS widows under thatched roofs,
moaned by malaria patients sharing a hospital bed,
of women who carry their babies from that
hospital, to bury them, and must fight
to live the next day. Mungode Yesu,
in the language that calls its people
five times a day to pronounce fear of Allah,
the language of sweat in the fields,
drought and blood and tears and widowhood,
partaken with wounds associated with that name,
in Hausa "Thank You Jesus"
testifies to the impossible
to hope where it was unknown,
mocks the darkness with the precious sounds,
"Mungode Yesu."

This is Mr. and Mrs. Sale Abdullah, M-background evangelists who welcomed us to their home last year. Sale went to heaven in January.

There and back again

I feel kind of bad that I didn't post at all while I was in Nigeria. Please understand that we had just one USB modem we were sharing among nine people, and a lot of the time it was very slow or didn't work at all. Thank you to those of you who prayed for us anyway. The Lord was there, and we are returning with much to do ahead of us. I am so thankful for how He continues to guide us. It has been a blessing to get to know the partners the Lord has brought us. Some of them are really strong in what they're doing; many others are struggling, but we know that the Lord does great things as His servants simply yield to Him.

I'll give a fuller report in a day or two, once my head is a little clearer. I've spent the last 42 hours or so traveling via cars and planes, so I'm a little out of it! Please pray for George, Claude and Mark, as Irene has interrupted their travels home.